


In the Nothing of a Night

by Grey_C



Category: HIStory3 - 圈套 | HIStory3: Trapped
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gentleness, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Not Beta'd: We Die Like WWX, Protective Jack, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24523417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grey_C/pseuds/Grey_C
Summary: If Jack ever sleeps through the night, he has strange frightening dreams that jerk his eyes wide open and his grip on Zhao Zi a little tighter. So he likes to wake up. He prowls the house with his knife and listens at every window and door. It is so incredibly important to know someone is coming, even if only for a second or two, before they know you know. He stands still as death near the front door to listen, prying the night birdcalls away from the insect noises away from the drip of last evening’s rain off the eaves, and thinks to himself, things like these keep people alive.
Relationships: Jack | Fang Liangdian/Zhao Li'an | Zhao-zi
Comments: 18
Kudos: 256





	In the Nothing of a Night

Old habits die hard, or so it would seem, as Jack jolts awake for the third time in one night.

First he lies still for a minute with his eyes closed and listens. He can hear the sweep of traffic in the street outside, the drone of crickets in the garden, the whirr of the fan on the bookshelf, and the soft thrum of Zhao Zi’s breathing, snug under his chin. So far, so good; by now he knows every sound this house makes on a normal night, from the rumble of the old refrigerator to the rustle of the neighborhood squirrel in the hedge. Not so much as a creak or a murmur out of place could escape him.

Second he opens his eyes and, without moving a muscle, looks around. He is used to lying in bed so that he can see every corner of a room without turning his head. It is very dark, very quiet, and all the shadows are their right shapes. Everything is as last evening left it: Zhao Zi’s plushies strewn across the floor, Jack’s leather jacket draped over the closet doorknob, both of their empty milk mugs sitting side by side on the nightstand. He waits for something in the room to move. Nothing does.

Third he gets up, and this is tricky, because Zhao Zi likes to sleep all over him. Every night it melts Jack a little bit more, how much Zhao Zi likes to wrap both arms and sometimes a leg around Jack like a baby sloth. It makes these surprise nighttime stirrings a little harder to deal with.

Jack is good at disengaging, though. He does so very gently so that Zhao Zi, who sleeps like a baby sloth too, never wakes up. He lifts and resettles the different pieces of Zhao Zi—arm, leg, head—carefully in the blankets. When Zhao Zi makes a tiny question noise, Jack lies very still, chewing his lips, until the breathing evens out again.

Very quietly, Jack slides his feet out of bed and stands up, watching Zhao Zi snuggle into the warmth left in the sheets. It hurts a little to see. Jack leans down and says in his ear, “It’s okay,” in a whisper so soft as to be barely a ruffle of breath. “I’ll be right back.”

Fourth he slinks a hand underneath his pillow to find his butterfly knife. It has been his for so long that it warms to his touch like a living thing. This is why he makes the bed every morning; Zhao Zi would not understand the weapon, the urge to know exactly where it is, the years of edge-living that taught him to keep it within arm’s reach at all times. Zhao Zi would be either confused or frightened, which is worse and makes Jack’s chest ache. Jack palms the knife and leaves the bedroom.

If he ever sleeps through the night, he has strange frightening dreams that jerk his eyes wide open and his grip on Zhao Zi a little tighter. So he likes to wake up. He prowls the house with his knife and listens at every window and door. It is so incredibly important to know someone is coming, even if only for a second or two, before they know you know. Once in the car on the way back from a deal he had a tingling feeling in the back of his neck and whipped around just seconds before the man would have ripped out his throat. So Jack stands still as death near the front door to listen, prying the night birdcalls away from the insect noises away from the drip of last evening’s rain off the eaves, and thinks to himself, things like these keep people alive.

The kitchen is full of dishes that they did not do after supper last night—Zhao Zi’s plate has a funny face drawn in its soy sauce, and Jack’s is chipped at the rim where he dropped it when Zhao Zi said, all of a sudden, lovely in his innocence, “I like you best of all the people on the earth, did you know?” Jack cannot remember what he said in response because Zhao Zi was smiling and Jack could not look away.

The living room is covered in papers because Zhao Zi is working on another case. When he brought the files home Jack looked over his shoulder, saw two names he had sworn never to speak again and one he had tried to erase from the earth for five years, and decided to keep a discreet silence. A life in the gang is difficult to escape. Once Zhao Zi asked him what he knew about a certain arson case and Jack had to walk away without a word. Zhao Zi does not ask him such questions anymore, and so it is the least Jack can do, in return for such grace, to keep his fingers out of Zhao Zi’s police work. In the dark, Jack takes one incriminating paper by the corner between two fingers and turns it over so that he can no longer read the names.

The bathroom is exceptionally clean because they cleaned it together yesterday, since Zhao Zi hates doing it and Jack hates to see Zhao Zi unhappy. So Jack scrubbed the toilet and Zhao Zi wiped down the mirror and vanity, and they worked together on the shower. Zhao Zi kept tickling his neck with the edge of the rag and pretending it was an accident. Jack drew a heart in the dust behind the door just so he could watch Zhao Zi hop a little and blush when he discovered it. At one point Zhao Zi got a little of the cleaning spray in his mouth and yelped at the taste, and Jack stole a kiss while his eyes were squeezed shut and said it tasted like flowers—“Flowers, really, Jack? When have you eaten flowers?”—and for a while after that they were very distracted. Really it was a wonder that the mirror ever got clean at all.

Jack pauses one last time in the hall and feels suddenly like a machine—hearing honed, sight sharpened, skin tingling. He has spent his life running and hiding and killing. He has a face that gives nothing away, a smile that sends chills up spines, hands just as dexterous whether picking the lock on a vault or wrenching an enemy’s guts out past their teeth.

But with Zhao Zi his face opens up and spills everything, his smile softens into something unrecognizable, and his hands tremble with how much they want, he wants. He cannot tell what he wants. In the darkest parts of the night he is afraid of what he wants.

He is not used to being afraid. He knows how to threaten and kill. He does not yet know how to love.

The machine was not designed for this.

A soft thump registers and he snaps round, whipping the knife open, muscles coiling into attack mode before he realizes that it is only Zhao Zi waking up. He looks down at his fingers on the knife and loosens them one by one. It is exactly this, that he is such a broken, haunted machine, that makes him afraid of wanting Zhao Zi, because he knows what happens when he wants something.

Another thump, and a creak, from inside the bedroom, and then a very small forlorn, “Jack?”

Jack pockets the knife and half-runs up the hall, opening the door with a careful soft click, to see Zhao Zi standing wrapped in a blanket. “Jack,” he says in that soft sad voice, “you weren’t there.” And Jack hurts all over for a moment and takes another running step or two to fold Zhao Zi in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into Zhao Zi’s sleep-damp hair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I went to make sure everything was all right. I’m sorry. Come back to bed.”

Zhao Zi lets Jack put him back to bed and tuck him in with those quick, vicious, dirty hands that go suddenly and strangely gentle in this house. When Jack climbs in beside him Zhao Zi rolls over and clings to him like always. “The bed was all cold without you,” he says warm into Jack’s neck.

“I’m sorry,” says Jack. “I went to make sure we were safe.”

“You don’t need to keep saying sorry,” mumbles Zhao Zi, depositing a sleepy kiss under Jack’s chin. “Aren’t we always safe?”

No, no, we are never safe, Jack does not say. Neither does he say, You are all I have to lose and do you know what happens to me when I lose something, I get wicked, I get cold and ruthless and you don’t want to see that and I don’t want you to. Neither does he say, I am afraid that I will hurt you and I hate to be afraid. He smiles up at the shadowy ceiling with all his teeth.

All he says is, “I won’t leave again tonight. Go to sleep, Shorty.”

Zhao Zi makes a satisfied little hum and is asleep almost at once. Jack sighs. Last time he tried to spend all night in bed he dreamed that the teeth of all the men he had ever killed were scattered all over the floor in a layer like gravel an inch thick. The time before that he dreamed that his skin bled like sweat, leaving blood in his clothes, on the floor, on the windows, on the doorknob, on the sidewalk as he ran… But tonight he can stay. If he has to keep his eyes open until daylight he can do that, there is nothing important tomorrow, he can take a nap or something. For Zhao Zi he can stay.

Some other night he will learn how to wrap sleepy Zhao Zi’s arms around a plushie or two so as not to disturb him when he has to get up. Some other night he will be quicker and quieter so that Zhao Zi will never have to know what keeps him up, with his butterfly knife in his hands, with his eyes wide open and his smile sometimes fake. Zhao Zi is beautiful and perfect and Jack wants him that way more than he has ever wanted anything in his life. These hands of his have held the ransoms of kings and the prices of countries, and yet nothing has ever felt as precious as Zhao Zi.

Zhao Zi does not understand—Zhao Zi, who curls up and buries his face in pillows and pulls the covers over his head like someone who has never even dreamed of being knifed in his sleep—but Jack is all right with that, because there are some things Zhao Zi does not need to understand, ever, and Jack can lie awake for both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the eponymous song by Hammock.
> 
> I wrote this in approximately two days after binge-watching History3 Trapped. It is not my best work. It may undergo extensive editing after being posted, but so be it. 
> 
> Sweet and sad in equal measures. I wanted to try a more serious take on their relationship.
> 
> Let me know if you liked it!


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